Thrilled to share that I’ll be joining the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania! Our lab will be relocating to the Department of Pharmacology in Jan ’26. We’re hiring at all levels—reach out if you’re interested! @isbupenn.bsky.social @pennmedicine.bsky.social

become my colleague at penn bioengineering: apply.interfolio.com/173716

We could always get some re-interpretation language from NIH but at present the "council in a calendar year" is pretty dang clear. For 2026 Councils, we can submit six apps between May 2025 and March 2026.

🙏 Please help! ad nauseam topic but for new NIH n=6 submission policy is it: a. 6 subs in 2025 calendar year = we can sub 6 R01s for Oct '25 + another 6 for Jan-Dec '26? b. subs in Oct '25 w/ May '26 Council = we can sub 6 R01s Oct '25 to June '26; count resets Oct '26?

(1/10) We’re excited to share our new preprint (doi.org/10.1101/2025...), which uncovers the spatiomolecular landscape of the human nucleus accumbens (NAc), by integrating snRNA-seq with Visium spatial transcriptomics across 10 control donors. 🧠 #NAcLIBD #snRNAseq #10xVisium

Have you ever wondered how some of the leaders in the pain field got their start? Check out this essay from @painthejournal.bsky.social about PRF editorial board member, Allan Basbaum, to learn how he became the journal’s 3rd Editor-in-Chief bit.ly/3JIJTXf #PRF #PainAwarenessMonth

My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight. These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them. www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

What can *genetic insensitivity to opioids* teach us about endogenous opioid function in humans? Fully funded position in Oslo (PhD student or postdoc) Interested in pain, mu/kappa opioids, behavioural genetics, RCTs, or related? Apply here: 2411.webcruiter.no/Main2/Recrui... Please RT for reach

I’m going to present on LUPE — our deep-learning system for automated pain behavior analysis — and the Affective-Motivational Pain Scale (AMPS) model for quantifying complex pain states 📄 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 💻 Analysis package: github.com/justin05423/...

A new study pinpoints an emotion-to-motivation gateway that converts painful signals into negative feelings, offering a promising target for non-opioid pain relief. Learn more in this week’s issue of #ScienceAdvances: scim.ag/46jefZE

So excited to have been part of this work from the Corder lab! Congrats to Jess and the whole team. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

⚡️🧠A nociceptive amygdala-striatal pathway modulating affective-motivational pain Now published on the cover of Science Advances @science.org Check it out 👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy 107th Birthday, Brenda Milner! Her contributions to neuropsychology shaped the way we understand the human brain. From surviving two world wars and two pandemics, to paving the way for future generations of researchers, Milner’s legacy continues. @mcgill.ca @cusm-muhc.bsky.social

Excited to see this finally out! Projection-TAGs allows you to do multiplex high-throughput multi-modal profiling of projection neurons. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am happy to share that I’ve been awarded tenure here at Columbia University. Alhamdulillah. I thank my wife, parents, mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. I thank my lab members, present and past, for entrusting their careers in my hands and making this a thrilling journey.

Huge congrats to Dr. Lisa Wooldridge! She crushed her PhD defense on central amygdala circuits in opioid dependence Incredible science, relentless rigor, and a fearless approach to tough questions So proud to be part of your journey, Lisa! 🧠🔥🎓🍾

Met w student in morning to discuss “time tiling” in imaging across fear conditioning Saw this new paper in the evening, sent to student Woke up to student’s reanalysis using open-source code from this paper … = retrosplineal drift with sharp jumps at tone+shock pairings vs extinction tones

🤮 more garbage takes in grant reviews .. we got a 5 and ultimately ND bc we have papers on bioRxiv that were to support the 20+ references for ACC/PAG/BLA roles in pain .. punished for preprints, wtf

im also an alzheimer's researcher now too ... 😜 angry CD68+ microglia eating some X-34 dyed plaques

How can one be so bad at their job and more generally at reading the room scientifically at so many levels. @_@

Would be nice if reviewers also took into account our current funding situation and not ask for these types of extensive revisions that cost $$$ that doesn't exist 🤷‍♀️

“Molecular characteristics, projection characteristics” lmao I wish people received a training course on how to review manuscripts. Review the science, don’t design new studies (albeit mentioning missing controls). And then turn in your review a couple of weeks late, like me. I reject this review

Peer review is so fucked … Reviewer 2: “Nice 5-year study. Now add 10–15 more years of data you’d need a second lifetime to collect and 3 R01s, and so I’m just gonna reject.” Me: “Cool cool cool.. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe go fuck yourself.”

🧠🐁 Interested in a quick / reliable / reproducible tool to quantify your fluoresently-tagged axons ? Check out AxoDen, a no-coding-needed web app and downloadable GUI ... Designed + developed entriely by the amazing Raquel Adaia Sandoval Ortega www.eneuro.org/content/12/6...

😈

How can you know if gene delivery in a primate worked Typically through expensive scans or histology. With @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social and co-authors we made synthetic markers that monitor gene delivery and Cre-dependent expression with a blood test: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#Psilocybin enhances fear extinction, suppresses fear neurons and recruits extinction neurons in the retrosplenial cortex in mice @flybottleescape.bsky.social @eahellerphd.bsky.social SynapticSoph.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧠 🍄 ⚡️🐭 Now published in @natneuro.nature.com Psilocybin enhances fear extinction by reshaping retrosplenial cortex ensembles—suppressing fear neurons, recruiting extinction neurons + boosting plasticity to enable behavioral flexibility nature.com/articles/s4159…

Check out our latest! Studies led by the amazing Megan Brickner - she finds really interesting patterns of dopamine signaling in the basolateral amygdala that report the emotional salience of sensory state transitions. These are largely non-associative, value-free signals, in contrast to classic DA.

BOOM! www.nature.com/articles/s41... I think this is a big step forward for the field. Congrats to Lauren Donovan and @vivtawfik-mdphd.bsky.social and the whole Tawfik lab team.

🧠💰K99/R00 NoA day! Huge congrats to Dr Blake Kimmey … #GameOn 🔥🍾🙌🏼 Gonna brag on this guy and say he’s on job market this year and he can bring this kinda cutting-edge placebo / pain / addiction systems-circuit neuro research to your department: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39803541/

@torwager.bsky.social argues that pain is an inference to mount a behavioural response (à la Ben Seymour). Reinforcing that chronic pain is a brain disease. This provides more impetus for brain-based biomarker @canadianpain.bsky.social ASK2025

Here’s just the most recent of the many NCCIH studies of #pain (from colleague @alexchesler.bsky.social published last week in Nature). Nearly 50% of NCCIH funding goes to studying pain, with a focus on nonpharmacological treatments and mechanisms. The proposed budget eliminates NCCIH.

Not shocking, but important: nociceptors fire → glutamate is released — with or without neuropeptides like SP or CGRP. This paper pushes the field past the idea that pain = peripheral neuropeptide release. Time to stop oversimplifying pain circuits and behaviors to single-molecule targets

A theme is emerging: attempts to reduce brain functions & dysfunctions to a few things (like an ion channel) aren’t working. A similar story exists for anesthesia - knockout all the putative things and anesthesia still works. “Lists of things” is not the way. The alternative? /1

A year ago today we lost the wonderful philosopher Daniel Dennett. He is still very greatly missed. Here's some reflections I wrote at time, in @nautil.us nautil.us/i-never-stop...

Very very cool. And aligns with Bud Craig's argument that pain is just as much an interoceptive 'state' as it is a somatosensory 'event'

🧠🐭📊🔬🧬BIG PREPRINT UPDATES: Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with our synthetic opioid gene therapy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/15

🧠🐭📊🔬🧬BIG PREPRINT UPDATES: Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with our synthetic opioid gene therapy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/15

… a good day

Other RIFs The Pain Policy and Planning office at NINDS www.ninds.nih.gov/about-ninds/...

new mouse cartton just dropped 🐭

🚨 New lab paper!🚨 A dream study of mine for nearly 20 yrs not possible until now thanks to NIH 🧠 funding & 1st-author lead @seeber.bsky.social We tracked hippocampal activity as people walked memory-guided paths & imagined them again. Did brain patterns reappear?🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Horse Grimace Scale 🐴 www.science.org/content/arti...

Had an r21 review sneak in before the chaos and just got the summary statements… feels like home 🥹

Hey everybody, I want to share a few things about my recent #preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩‍🔬

On behalf of my BSky-less student, Lisa Wooldridge: 🐭🧠💊⚡️ "Thrilled that my PhD work is on bioRxiv! I study how central amygdala (CeA) neurons contribute to opioid effects, but how specific CeA cell types drive this process remains unclear" 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📣 Our first speaker announcement for the Philly @standupforscience.bsky.social rally on March 7th, 11a at City Hall. 📣 We will hear from Congressmembers Jamie Gauthier and Nina Ahmad and squid biologist @sarahmackattack.bsky.social (Skype A Scientist). RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...

A large portion of grants awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health cannot be funded for the foreseeable future because of an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register, according to an email reviewed by The Transmitter. By @avaskham.bsky.social bit.ly/3X8ngz8